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Morning Brew delivers quick and insightful updates about the business world every day of the week from Wall St. to Silicon Valley.
At the end of 2023, we asked you to take some educated guesses about what would happen this year across business, politics, and more. Here’s what you got right and wrong:
✅ The US continued to avoid a recession. Most of you (82%) got this right. Though the cost of groceries might still be hurting your wallet, US officials achieved the rare soft landing this year—aka bringing inflation under control without spiking unemployment—and finally started cutting interest rates. Consumer prices rose 2.7% over the past year, down from a 3.1% uptick from November 2022 to November 2023.
❌ Donald Trump won the election. Less than 30% of you correctly predicted the election’s outcome—34.5% thought President Joe Biden would win, and 36.9% locked in “someone else.”
✅ Elon Musk still owns most of X. The Tesla boss retains a 79% stake worth more than $5 billion, according to Investopedia.
✅ Apple didn’t buy Disney. Nearly all of you got this right. Current and former Disney execs told CNBC in 2023 that they believed returning CEO Bob Iger ultimately wanted to sell to Apple, something he’s previously denied.
❌ The S&P 500 is up almost 30% this year. Y’all underestimated the markets: Nearly two-thirds of you thought the S&P would climb no more than 10 points, leveling out after its 24% rise in 2023. Less than 1 in 5 of you accurately predicted higher gains.
❌ Inside Out 2 won the box office. The biggest film of 2024 was this question’s least popular guess, getting only 7.4% of the vote. Since its summer release, Inside Out 2 has made more than $1.5 billion globally, beating out Deadpool & Wolverine, your second-most popular guess.
❌ The Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl (again). The Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers were the most popular guesses for the LVIII ring, but the Chiefs punched their ticket to the big game and came back in the second half to beat the 49ers in overtime.
✅ Donald Trump is a convicted felon. In May, Trump became the first former commander-in-chief to be found guilty of felony crimes, which a narrow majority of you (56%) believed would be true by year’s end.
✅ The war in Ukraine did not end. It has been more than 1,000 days since Russia invaded Ukraine. This year, Putin’s forces seized almost six times more Ukrainian territory than they did in 2023. President Biden gave Ukraine the go-ahead to fire long-range US missiles into Russia for the first time last month.
❌ Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are still together. This was about as close as the presidential election’s popular vote—50.9% of you thought they’d break up this year, but 49.1% had faith. Big phew for Hallmark and Lifetime, which both released Christmas movies based on the couple’s romance.—ML
Morning Brew delivers quick and insightful updates about the business world every day of the week from Wall St. to Silicon Valley.
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